It all started because Mao Zedong's arm wasn't waving.
When I was in Hong Kong at the Jade Market, I had purchased two 70-year-old porcelain-and-silver teapots from a vendor. They are plentiful around here, and quite charming.
This sort of item is the kind of thing used in Grandma's house in the 1940s and, because it is so common, not many Chinese people want to purchase them. My guess is that everyone has a few in their homes already.
Just as we were finishing the transaction, I saw a Mao Zedong wrist watch. It appeared to be new; it even had the plastic sticker on the face of the watch.
With all the excitement of getting a good price, I didn't happen to notice that the watch wasn't working. I took out my trusty bicycle and went to a little watch-and-shoe repair stand inside a grocery store run by a husband and wife.
* * *
I miss these little shops in the U.S.A. When I was a kid growing up in rural Vermont, we had a couple of shoe repair places. Each was in the basement of buildings on Main Street. They were each owned by brothers or cousins of the DeAngelis family, their parents having emigrated from Italy.
It was so lovely to purchase a real leather pair of shoes, something you loved and you knew would last. When the heels wore down or the leather split, all you had to do was head into the shoe repair shop, where one of the DeAngelises always seemed to be open.
They would look it over, suggest a price, tag your shoes with a numbered piece of oaktag, give you a copy of the number from the bottom of the tag, and send you on your way.
* * *
I find it quite sad that everything is made so cheaply these days that if your shoes wear out, you simply purchase a new pair and throw the old ones out.
Though the shoes we purchase are likely made in China, the folks in China don't seem to be buying them. The shoes I see on people's feet are like what we wore in the 1960s: well-made from leather. When they wear out, they bring them to the shoe-repair man.
They insist on quality, too.
While I was waiting for the owner to look at my watch, I noticed a couple nearby. The woman was sitting down as the cobbler had both of her shoes. They were leopard-skin high heels, and a new pad was being placed on the bottom of the spike.
When the cobbler was finished with them, he handed them back. The woman refused to pay because a string was hanging off the heels. That meant to her that the design on the side of the shoe might unravel.
Not to worry: the cobbler got out some shoe cement, and all was well in a matter of moments. He even took a big brush and cleaned her shoes for her. They looked like new.
She and her husband looked them over very carefully before she handed over a little less than $3 for two brand-new heels.
It took awhile, but after a half an hour or so, Mao's hand was waving, and the watch was in perfect running order. I was thrilled.
* * *
I like the fact that people wait for things in China. There isn't a sense of hurry. If you don't have the time to wait for your watch, you don't bring it in.
This is - with the possible exception of Internet shopping - a cash society. You hand over your watch, you wait for the repair, and you pay cash for the completed work. Businesses are so much easier to run this way.
This way of doing business is another part of my childhood, one that I remember well. We didn't use credit cards in the 1950s and '60s. I don't remember Visa and MasterCard making a real appearance until the late 1970s.
I can still hear my father saying, as he often did, “Those goddamned credit cards are going to get a lot of people in trouble. If you don't have the cash for something, how are you supposed to pay off the card?”
He had an excellent point. A child of the Great Depression, he and my mother paid cash for everything and were proud to say that they paid off their 20-year mortgage in less than 15 years. That's what you did if you were fiscally responsible in those days.
* * *
With my watch running, I decided to do a quick shop upstairs. Next to the watch-and-shoe repair stand are a bunch of free lockers; to their right is a stairless escalator. One takes a shopping cart from the line, wheels it on to the belt of the escalator, and up you go to the second floor where there is a grocery store.
If you want to shop in the department-store portion you continue on and up to the third level. The cashiers are on the second level, so all are forced to come back down the stairless escalator with their carts to check out, then back down the last one to the ground floor.
I caused a bit of a stir while gathering a few groceries as I was wearing not only jeans but also a jean jacket. It is unusual enough for a woman to be wearing jeans in China, and it's exceptionally unusual to be wearing a backpack while carrying a bicycle helmet.
To the folks there who, for the most part, can't afford to wear jeans, a woman in an entire outfit of the material, with what they consider to be a “youngster's book bag” on her back, was a sight to see. I liken it to a person walking into an American grocery store dressed as an astronaut.
As I moved among the fresh produce, fish, and fruits and past the baskets and baskets of grains, nuts, and teas, some people openly stared, while others called out “Hello” or “Hey, foreigner” in Chinese.
I treated myself to something I had not seen in my area of China before: fresh, wild Norwegian Salmon. It cost $6 for a chunk big enough for two meals, but it was a heavenly sight, if a tad expensive for my budget.
Plastic bags are supposed to be outlawed in China. Though small family vendors and stores still give them out, if you need one at the grocery store, you are charged a pretty hefty rate for the privilege.
I carry shopping bags with me and keep them inside my backpack. I also load groceries inside the pack itself.
* * *
I need to be careful of the weight that I am carrying on my bicycle and prefer to put most of it on my back. When I fill the front or the rear basket I can get off balance.
The traffic is such that I must always be on guard. I often have to stop quickly for a pedestrian who decides to walk in front of me, or an elderly person who doesn't hear my bell as I approach.
Sometimes the little motor scooters cut me off in the bicycle lane, and other times the three-wheeled bicycles, the ones that older people and some vendors use, take up the entire lane.
All riders must stop or slow down so much we are forced to stop. With a lot of weight on the bike, the ride can get unwieldy with all that stopping and starting.
My bike is a simple thing with no gears and hand brakes. I can imagine that gear bicycles are not popular because they are expensive and also because it's not very helpful to have them with the bumpy kind of traffic we cyclists ride in.
* * *
I left my shopping cart on the second floor and carried my packed groceries on my back and in a small bag. I started down the stairless escalator and was momentarily distracted by a grandmother yelling out to me. She was helping her little granddaughter wave to me from above, as we'd had a nice couple of moments in the peanut section when we were both shopping.
“Goodbye! Goodbye!” the 3-year-old was yelling. I looked up at her and waved.
Suddenly, about 6 feet in front of me, I heard a tremendous crash. A baby was crying. An elderly man was lying on the floor.
It appeared that the cart with the 6-month-old baby had been pushed by the mother. She didn't notice that the elderly man with his shopping cart was immediately behind her. She suddenly stopped to attend to the baby. The two shopping carts crashed as the mother pulled the infant out of the seat just in the nick of time. Her cart crashed under the other one.
There were three people between me and the crash site, and these people had nowhere to go. They were being pushed into what was fast becoming a pile of people, groceries, and carts at the foot of the escalator.
I started to observe what was happening while I let my legs walk backward up the escalator to avoid becoming a part of the pileup for as long as possible. Following my lead, the people behind me turned and walked back up to the second floor.
People were screaming. The baby was crying. The people forced into the pileup as the escalator ended were stepping on others. Some fell down. Others fell over the groceries scattered on the floor.
In the middle of it all were the shopping carts: a big hunk of twisted metal in the way of everything and everyone.
Observers were forming a semi-circle around the accident scene, making it even more difficult for people to get off the floor and out of the way. No one was lending a hand to the hurt shoppers. There was a general look of shock on their faces.
I've seen this situation play out many times before, working five years on our local ambulance.
When there is trouble, crowds often freeze at the sight before them. They need a jolt of some kind to rouse them into action. I learned about this human dynamic when I went to Emergency Medicine School while studying to be an Emergency Medical Technician.
Though only seconds had passed since the original fall, I had observed enough to know what to do now, so I looked back and yelled to the attendant to stop the escalator at the top of the stairs.
She was just as shocked as the people below. I was speaking English but gesticulating wildly. She got the idea quickly, snapped out of it, and stopped the escalator, which jolted to a halt under my feet.
I jumped over the hurt man and just missed a package of sesame noodles that others were slipping over on the floor. I grabbed a young man from the crowd who was standing there looking stunned, took his arm, and pointed to the security man in the parking lot just outside of the store. He didn't speak English, but he got the idea and in seconds jetted off to get some help.
I stood in front of the crowd and got everyone to push back, then asked another woman to put up her arms and keep them at bay.
The baby was crying. The child had been lifted out of the cart before it could have been hurt, but I stopped and looked at the mother to be sure they were both all right. She nodded and waved me over to the old man on the floor.
He was surprisingly calm. I grabbed his hand, checked his pulse and noticed it was racing and a little irregular, but he was breathing and was able to wiggle his limbs.
I sat down on the floor next to him and looked him in the eye. He smiled and patted me on the shoulder, an excellent sign that all was right in his world.
He started to relax and the color came back to his face. I motioned for him to just sit still for a moment.
I got up and grabbed the shopping carts that were in the way. Another man in the crowd walked over and held the bottom of the cart while I pulled them apart and got them upright. The baby had stopped crying.
Several people walked over now and put the groceries back inside the shopping cart, while the mother told them what was hers and what belonged in the elderly man's shopping bag.
I went back to the man and helped him up. With not as much interest in the clean up as in the accident, the crowd slowly began to disperse. I checked his pulse again, and it was back to normal. I handed him his shopping bag and shook his hand. He smiled broadly.
Just then, the security guard came around the corner, a few people pointed to me, and he waved his thanks. I grabbed my other bag and headed around the corner for the door. It was time to let the professional take over.
* * *
I had purchased a hyacinth bulb in a glass that I had put in the outside pocket of my backpack where the water bottle is supposed to go. Because I had unexpectedly been bending over, all the water had poured out and was running down my back and out the bottom of my backpack. I hadn't felt it.
As I was going out the door, someone came running up behind me yelling at me in Chinese. I waited for him.
It was the man who helped me pull the shopping carts apart. He gestured to the backpack and asked me to take it off. Then I saw the problem and began to laugh as my shirt started to soak. He was a little confused as to why I was laughing, but since I wasn't worried about it, he wasn't.
He stood in front of me, smiling, saying something in Chinese, but I must have just looked perplexed. Seeing that I couldn't understand, he simply put both his thumbs up and smiled. Then he shook my hand.
We walked out the door together, and he went over to wait for the next bus to arrive, while I unlocked my bike.
I got settled, put my helmet on, loaded up my bike and headed on my way. As I rode past the bus stop where the man had walked, I realized that he and everyone else was clapping. He must have told the strangers there what had happened inside the grocery store.
They applauded wildly and cheered as I rode past and gave a wave of thanks for their acknowledgement.
It is true. I do not speak Chinese. I do, however, speak the universal language of human beings. I learned long ago, people are people all over the world. It's a lovely truth.